If you stay within your archetypes skill selection for a full 20 level then you will have exclusive access to a "Capstone" skill. While the capstone skill will not be available to folks who mix and match, it's the only restriction we've heard so far.

capstones will be available to folk that mix and match, but only if they do it "the right way" (master one archetype, then move on to next).

It would be extremely unusual in EVE to spend a half hour moving a load of minerals, especially the lowest margin minerals. Common ore is usually harvested close to where it is needed for production. And it is also unlikely that you'd pay for a guard for the limited time you'd be moving the minerals - the space you'd be traversing is usually perfectly safe. (You're more likely to need guards while you harvest).

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It's much more common for solo traders to be moving finished goods rather than ore. Trade in intermediate components and finished goods is where most traders make thier profits. And that scales into high risk/high reward options too.

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actually, tritanium (which is cheapest mineral) is rarely harvested locally in null-sec. it's cheaper to buy it Jita and transport it where one needs it. anomallous? maybe, but true. mining veldspar/tritanium simply does not pay off. it's more viable to do... just about anything else, and then buy trit.

and when trit is transported, it's compressed in a product, for example, large gun turrets (which happen to have much less volume then minerals they are made of). these are recycled at/near destination back into trit.

as for how long trips take: two closest major trade hubs, Jita and Amarr, are 9 systems apart (high-sec); freighter needs 3 min per system with live pilot; that's easily half hour (9 jumps plus warp to station). other two important hubs are Dodixie at 15 jumps (~45 min) from Jita and Rens at 25 (~75 min). that's for one-way trip.

But equipment above that level... should be entirely player controled.

There's another thread discussing the possibility of having the entire population be players, with no substantial NPC population even. To me, this would be great, as long as I could have a significant number (12?) of extremely low level characters to populate my little village performing menial tasks. With that in mind, I think I can see how a fully player-driven economy is reasonable.

there is no technical difference between deer NPC, human NPC or dragon NPC. they each perform specific function. also, it doesn't matter whether NPC was created by devs or players. if it's not under player direct control (when player goes offline) then it's NPC.

it's not uncommon in EVE for corps to practice fleet combat in high-sec. corp members can shoot each other without police responding. people get split into two fleets, meet and fight it out.

even non-corp members can have duel by using aggression mechanic: first pilot drops trivial item in a can, other pilot loots the can giving first pilot right to shoot without police responding.

it's obviously that the demand is there. people have been asking for "official" dueling arena for a long time in EVE. closest to official "arena" is Alliance tournaments, but that's closed to majority of population and happens only once per year. another option is testing server where everything costs trivial amount of in-game currency, so people go there to practice.

so, if there would not be "official" dueling mechanic, maybe there could be un-official?

Immersion breaking? depends who you ask. duel could be to first blood, half health or death. and we are talking about combat duels, so, crafters, merchants and diplomats should do the same they would do in actual combat: delegate secondary.

It sucks to be bothered? flag "refuse all duels". done. as for SirAwesome, he'll have to do some fighting (duels or not) or nobody is going to care about his character concept. or if he doesn't care what others think, then he should just as well ignore duels too.

It is a resource-drain with no reward? it's player's created content. there doesn't have to be reward beyond winning, or players can build their own leagues, rankings and rewards.

It devalues "real" combat? it doesn't. real combat has real consequences. duel has no consequence, unless players want to have them (see previous).

It's likely to be one of those things that "Sounds Cool", but then "Nobody Does"? any game i played, there were people interested in dueling. there will most certainly be such players in PFO.

The only people who are likely to really want do it are the same people who you probably find annoying elsewhere in the game system? i'll be surprised to find NO annoying people in PFO, dueling or not. also, i'd rather have dueling regulated than happening through some unofficial loop.

What are they carrying? They're carrying stuff from market to market for arbitrage. They're carrying stuff they need to survive in adventures against monstrous creatures. They're carrying the spoils of their recent victories. They're carrying resources they've just harvested.

By the way, EVE Online works exactly like this, so I'm not just making this up.

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how will fast-travel interact with transportation? in EVE, market arbitrage is possible because it takes time to move goods from market to market (freighters being notoriously slow and sluggish). will goods carried by character or there will be horses, wagons or caravans for extra capacity?

Going for the "capstone" for me will probably be easier than other people. In all my years of P&P role playing, I have never multi-classed. If I chose a fighter, then I am a fighter all the way. I can understand the draw for wanting to be able to cast spells as a fighter. But, if you can do that, then you already have abilities that may be better than any capstone you may receive.
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note that there is nothing stopping you from having fighter capstone AND spellcasting. if you do it "the right way".

i wonder, will capstones be in game at launch at all? if projected time to reach them is 2.5 years, that requires designing something that won't be used for a long time. also, MMO are in constant state of change. WOW wasn't same game in 2005 and 2007. EVE wasn't same in 2003 and 2005.

making a choice of everlasting consequence in such environment is a leap of faith.

When instances were first introduced they were ment as a way to channel players into challenges while preventing (unwanted) interaction.

This results in the phenomenom that 1000 people just entered that door but when I do so too, I am alone in the area that lies behind...

So far no game has managed to get a real big variety of said random instances. After ten times maximum you usually have seen it all because it is simply not cost efficient.

Finally for a sandbox game the persistant world should always have the focus. Throwing a large amount of dev time into instances is a themepark mmo thing and I would hate that in PFO as it is exactly the thing that I do not like in modern day themepark MMOs.

on other hand, instances are great learning places. not everyone learns at the same speed. some people are fast, others are slower. see how sport is arranged in leagues? not everyone plays together. throwing new players with highly-competitive veterans rarely works.

That's another problem I see with the Capstones. Why would you make a PC to level as a Crafter or Merchant, as Goblinworks has stated they want a player-driven Economy, where we make everything from shoes and belt-buckles to weapons, armor and even housing, if you will be denied the 'best' or 'capstone' ability for not automatically picking the 'straight' path?

RAW, i'd say Crafter and Merchant will be class with their own cap-abilities (pun!).

or crafter and merchant skills will not be considered archetype skills, therefore not preventing you from getting caps.

that's not the point. numbers were for example. point is that two players spend equal time and effort, yet get different result.

effect will be that everyone will suggest new player to stick to one class and get cap-stone, regardless of how new player would want to play otherwise. to get something after 2.5 years, that might or not benefit them then.

learning skills in EVE were removed for exact same reason. they became mandatory. question was not whether to learn them, only how soon. and fact that people didn't even bother to play the game during training made it worse.

another note:
requirements for item use - is there any chance to not have requirements for items? is there possibility to let anyone use any item, but have attributes/skills/abilities enhance such use?

i'm fine with special abilities having requirements for use, but a sword is a sword. if i can pick it up i should be able to use it, even if only as thrown item.

Cap-stone ability exclusivity
as it's proposed, it's "now or never". you either go for it, or it's gone forever. i know myself, i'm jack-of-all-trades, which means i'm at disadvantage in such system. if i don't go for cap-stone, i can never get there. if i go for cap-stone, i'm not enjoying myself because of being forced to play certain way.

Do you also feel bad when you've made a Fighter 5/ Monk 5/ Wizard 5/ Bard 5 and playing Pathfinder? Every time you multiclass you choose to make yourself less good at what your original class was doing. No one is saying you can't play a character like that. But you should be aware that the first time you take a level outside of your first class you are giving up the ability to ever get the capstone ability for your any class. Sometimes that trade is worth it - A friend of mine just became a Ranger 15 / Fighter 1 in the game I run and that says to me that the ranger capstone probably isn't good enough.

note that in Pathfinder Online, skill system will be open-ended. so, in 2.5 years, i become Ranger 10/Fighter 10, and you become Fighter 20. you get cap-stone ability. 2.5 years later, i become Ranger 10/Fighter 20, and you become Ranger 10/Fighter 20. i don't get cap-stone ability.

one thing i have problem with:
Cap-stone ability exclusivity
as it's proposed, it's "now or never". you either go for it, or it's gone forever. i know myself, i'm jack-of-all-trades, which means i'm at disadvantage in such system. if i don't go for cap-stone, i can never get there. if i go for cap-stone, i'm not enjoying myself because of being forced to play certain way.

or, look at the different way. cap-stone is a choice that isn't a choice. if you don't go for it right from the start, you can never have it. but someone who goes for it, can always diversify later. it's obvious that former is of less value, even if required time is very long.

a better way would be to allow everyone who meets requirement to be able to have cap-stone ability, but only one at any given time. for example, if someone is Mage 20/Ranger 20, they can only choose benefit of one cap-stone ability. this gives option to people to either specialize and go all the way, or diversify but still have goals for some later time.

One other solution, that may be less metagamey and more strategy. What if different crafted types of armor can grant heavy resistance/immunity to certain types of energy, and there were reasonable quanities of types of armor. IE before a big battle a town decides "OK our wizards want to focus on lightning damage this time around, everyone use lightning resist armor" etc... It keeps the feel and a smart army would alternate (to keep opponents from guessing the type of energy they are using).

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in EVE, caldari militia lured their gallente opponents into a smart bomb trap (smart bombs create bursts of aoe damage; it doesn't affect firing ship, but it does affect friendlies). basically, caldari used specific smart bomb to generate specific damage and tanked themselves against that damage.

fireworks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlZ0EcsneSg :)

of course, strategic significance is low, as it easy to counter, but tactically, with a bit of bad judgment from their opponent, it gained them a victory.

Want to hinder the goldsellers? Don't have gold and gear drop from animals. Force the goldsellers to attack PCs/towns to actually get stuff worth selling and we have now created the bandit community (*grin*). Not to mention, the goldseller merchants, the ones who actually buy this stolen gear, would only make money by selling it back to PCs. This is called a fence...

wouldn't make a difference. goldselling is based on "farming wealth" (wealth includes money or items). usually, it's automated ("botting") to reduce costs (on person supervising multiple automated bots). basically, as long as profitable activity can be automated, there will be goldselling.

any actual money has to come from somewhere. makes little difference whether it drops from NPCs, is generated at vendors or is mined and minted.

depends on whether new, better items are introduced. EVE players still use (more or less) same items after 7 years. WOW adds new batch each expansion, and it's not unusual to replace several items in each slot every four months.

Beyond simply the sandbox vs. not-sandbox dichotomy, I think there are some important thematic differences between the two games that make this possible. The corporatist, militaristic, hyper-future approach that EVE takes lends itself to the idea of simply repurchasing destroyed hardware. High fantasy worlds, on the other hand, have much stronger traditions of characters having unique, signature gear, and the appearance/strength of that gear reflecting that character's rise in power.

or, wouldn't it be more appropriate for EVE to have planned obsolescence and arms race of high-tech society? and for fantasy world with fixed technology levels to have static items? a sword is a sword is a sword. it's all point of view.

tho, i'm on for signature gear. it would be quite neat to have have limited "soul-binding", where player chooses single item that makes him stand in the crowd or makes his "build" work.

... I know very few active MMORPG players who spent more than a few months with any given item before trading up.

depends on whether new, better items are introduced. EVE players still use (more or less) same items after 7 years. WOW adds new batch each expansion, and it's not unusual to replace several items in each slot every four months.

so, either items break down, and are replaced with same items, or items do not break down and are replaced with better items.

i prefer former as it keeps stats within constant range. every item has purpose. there is no obsolescence. new players have something to do, and something to use. better gear costs more money to buy/repair, but it's not completely overshadowing weak gear that costs less money to buy/repair.

I don't believe many people are against the idea of repairs at all, I haven't heard anyone opposed to the idea of the repairs existing, but costing a good percentage of the materials needed to build the weapon to begin with. IE not WoW's, pocket full of change and you are set. Something more along the lines of, If the weapon took, 30 bars of adamantine, for the weapon, say 2 dragon hearts and 2 spider fangs, and lets say 2 hours to craft.

You can repair it for 15 bars of adamantine, 1 dragon heart, 1 spider fang and 1 hour (now crafters themselves may chose to stock up on these items (by buying them from every adventurer that is willing), and just charge you for the items themselves with a nice profit margin for themselves) ...

or they could buy/build (decaying) tools that are used for building/repairing. PC repairs would then be nice money/material sink.

tho, i prefer decaying items as well, and not planned obsolesce trough expansions. maybe each time item is repaired it loses on maximum durability.

I've read four pages, and still don't understand why some people are opposed to AoE (all creatures) effects. There's no technological reason that targeting can't be done client-side. The person casting a spell would know who he was hitting when he cast it.

That seems a simple idea. If the client takes a snap-shot at the time of casting of the situation when the spell is cast. From that it determines who/what is hit and then passes that to the server. Sure lag/ping times will mean that at times it will appear that friends were in the blast radius it would alleviate the problem of targeting based on a lagged view of the battlefield.

Interesting - any computer dudes about? Is this possible?

S.

can't do that. for all practical purposes, server considers all clients to be lying, cheating scumbags. any action calculations and resolutions are done server-side. clients can only send requests; not demands.

it does depend on associated costs and power balance. if costs are linear, then your case applies. half-ranger, half-necromancer is probably less effective than full type. if costs are exponential, then there might be 80%-ranger, 80% necromancer, which could not even be bad.

That's true (though I can't think of many games that are skill-based and also having growing talent point costs as you level a tree, but that doesn't mean PFO can't do it), but you still need to keep in mind that most talent tree-like systems feature capstone abilities that are much stronger than anything else in the tree and help define a character at that level. You'd have to figure out how to build this out of your system, or else someone respecing would spend the entire respec process without any capstone abilities (since it would be the first to go and the last to be purchased).

cap-stone abilities work in (single) class-based game, because there isn't anywhere else to go but up, so you can be generous without gimping anyone. but, wouldn't it be better to spread the love? if devs go with skill-based system, there will have to be system to balance jack-of-all-trades and masters-of-few. even if there are cap-stone abilties, they shouldn't be defining or exclusive. otherwise, it's just class system with different progression.

also, what if they let advancement be open-ended? how many cap-stones can one get? and it's one thing to balance actions by ship type. it's quite different to not be able to drop bow and take out a wand.

honestly, if strict adherence to roles is holy cow, it would make more sense to simply keep class system.

I agree to a point, but I just hate the "full respec". Whatever mechanic you want to make, just make it gradual. One "feat" per week, or per level, a B.o.P. consumable that you get for completing some crazy dungeon or achieving something in the game that lets you swap out a feat or two, something along those lines.

While I see the appeal, this would be equally problematic.

Imagine someone has a "build" in mind, but it's wildly different from the one they have. Perhaps they are currently the Ranger you described, but they want to be the Necromancer. Under your proposed gradual system, there will be a point at which they are half-Ranger, half-Necromancer. And, chances are, they won't be adequate at either of those jobs because they're suffering from a lack of focus. You'll have stretches of weeks at a time where players are frustrated with how impractical their character is mid-way through its transition, but which they're forced to put up with if they want to try out something different.

it does depend on associated costs and power balance. if costs are linear, then your case applies. half-ranger, half-necromancer is probably less effective than full type. if costs are exponential, then there might be 80%-ranger, 80% necromancer, which could not even be bad.

yes, please. tie it up with research and exploration, for budding Indiana Joneses. tho, if these are random generated, they should only exist until cleared. when cleared, dungeon "collapses". otherwise, it won't really be random after first run.

...hold the position that no idea is inherently bad, and have to defend that position (something that I believe is both practically and morally untenable)

i still do. context is what gives value to ideas. nothing has value of itself. neither "sticking your hand in a garbage disposal", nor "garbage disposal (is) running" are bad. and, if we are talking extremes, even "sticking your hand in a garbage disposal while it's running" isn't bad, if alternative is worse.

Scott Betts wrote:

...context of PFO's development

just a reminder. context described as "open-world sandbox with theme-park elements" and strong emphasis on PVP, led by people that draw considerable inspiration from EVE.

Generally pretty much any MMO is going to involve working with teams, and quitting in the middle of a raid, battle, instance etc... generally builds up a bad reputation that makes people not want to team with you again. So with that pre-req I would say MMO's are not the genre for you.

depends on game, really. there are MMO that are extremely forgiving, and there are MMO that allow multitude of playstyles. even EVE allows for casual play, when one knows what they are doing. also, there are very diverse communities; some are hardcore and have high demands; others are casual and have simple requirements (like say hi when you come online and talk in chat now and then).

IMO infrequent respecs are as good as no respecs. Say you just respecced and don't like it. If it takes a month (for the sake of argument) to skill up a new tree, what's the difference between waiting to respec and just skilling up?

Although I agree that unlimited respecs are kind of silly.

but couldn't that be applied to any consequence? why does my gear get damaged when i die? or why does my gear drop as loot when i die? why do i have to corpsewalk or suffer death penalty? why do i have to keep my clone updated?

According to you, it's not bad. I'm telling you to kill everyone, but I guess it's not a bad idea, right?

Tell me that you still believe no idea is bad.

in the context of deathmatch, it works perfectly fine. personally, i can stomach it for about couple of hours a year (like, mindless Half-Life romp). but i do know people that don't mind doing it for years.

stop doing that. i'm fine with you having your opinion. have decency to allow me have my own. otherwise, why bother discussing anything with me? you can't know what i believe or not. you can only know why i say. either go with that, or let it go.

First off Scott, let's not forget that you're a vocal minority here as well.

I'm vocal. I don't believe my thinking is in the minority, however.

Quote:

That being said, this vocal minority is proposing ideas that they think would bring something to an MMORPG, not necessarily PFO. If the Dev's think it's an interesting idea they may spend some time implementing it into the alpha build where it will be test, adjusted and either approved or rejected. The only way we find out if things work or don't is by trying and testing them. You often come off as "if it's tried and tested" in other MMO's it = good. If it hasn't been in an MMO or you no longer find (like vision limiting night/darkness) in an MMO since the introduction of WoW it = bad.

Actually, it's more along the lines of "This idea is bad and here is why, and oh by the way everyone knows it's bad which is why the big players won't touch it with a ten foot pole."

It's not bad because other MMOs don't do it. It's bad, and that's why other MMOs don't do it.

no idea is bad of itself. the big boys are not putting some ideas into their games because they want to have as many subs as possible. but just because idea doesn't work in some games, it doesn't mean it doesn't work at all.

there has been niche products in every product and service imaginable. being a niche product is not bad; it simply means that product is targeted at specific audience.

Well lets take PVP out for a second and ask, how would you handle the PVE side of it? Do you make 95% of enemies ranged? How do you stop a player from trivially eliminating every enemy without ranged attacks by flying over them, without putting every enemy of worth inside of a cave?

How do you make travel a challenge from anything, whether enemies or players when you add unlimited flight?

Right, me too. You do know it might add an additional layer of crapiness to Open PvP? I hate to use WoW as an example here but it's not uncommon for a lvl 80 player to swoop down from on high, dismount, one shot a player that's much lower level and mount up and take to the skies again.

which is only natural, because every other high-level already has flying mount and can escape on time. being starved makes everyone desperate.

I know EVE allows attribute respecs (in a universe of reengineered clones, it does not seem impossible to design yourself a new body with enhanced muscle tone lets say), but I am not sure if they allow skill respecs...I am not even sure how you would do that in a skill based system. I would be very disappointed if they did. I know Ryzom, another skill based system does not.

EVE allows attribute remap once per year (remapping attributes triggers 1 year cooldown; no stacking; bonus remaps are given to new characters and sometimes as gift). attributes exclusively affect learning speed only (no other effect). skill redistribution is not available publicly (however, several skill were removed from game and any skill points invested in those skills were refunded and could be applied to other skills; there is mechanic, it just isn't available to public).

once flying mounts are made available to players, everyone is going to have them. if there is high requirement to have them, everyone is going to get that requirement. everyone is going to pay the price, no matter how high.

i'd rather sacrifice flying mounts only for fixed routes and/or special occasions, than let everyone have one.

edit: as for Titans in EVE. yes, everyone has them. it's just silly how many supercaps are in EVE, and what players are willing to do to get them.

But you should be able to make up for it later. Either with a respec for a feat style system, or just train up the skills that you are missing in a skill system.

I hope for the later, the ability to respec is anti-consequences. If there are no caps you want to learn something different, go do so. Being able to respec at whim is equal to...and I suggest if they go that route just skip the middle and give everyone access to every skill they have the time in game to be able to know.

No respec, just everyone knows everything it is possible for their character to know.

(but...I hope this is a game with consequences)

respec doesn't have to be anti-consequence. make it once per month, or longer. time ticks equally for everyone.

I would be an advocate of making the recipe itself unique, but then the person who knows it would leave game and it would never get made...and I am not willing to accept that.

make crafting process of unique items random. make unique item time-limited, say 1 month real-time duration. person with unique can choose to hide it, but they would lose it in one month. think of artifacts that disappear if not used for their intended purpose.